


Lost

by Raegaryen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Daenerys is reflecting on her brother and their relationship, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Post S1 E6 "A Golden Crown", Sort Of, Trauma, Viserys Targaryen's funeral, which obviously means
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:49:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27136882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raegaryen/pseuds/Raegaryen
Summary: “A king of seven kingdoms, he said, and yet his funeral pyre is where they burn the filth. The gods love their jokes.”“Khaleesi…”“I do not want to sleep.”They are both silent, breaths soft and quiet in time with the shifting of the grass. The woman is unsettlingly still.“I do not want to sleep,” she repeats, “If I sleep, I will dream of him. And I can’t bear to cry over the man he never was.”---Daenerys reflects on her brother the morning after his death.
Kudos: 6





	Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!! So my last work kind of upset people (sorry, I guess?) and honestly this one probably will too. What can I say, apparently I have a thing for trauma ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> This is basically what it says on the tin, but with plenty of my own head canons thrown in. Like I always wondered what happened to Viserys's body, but in this I figured they wouldn't want to give him any special rites or whatever, but Daenerys would want him burned in Targ tradition. So! He quite literally gets burned on the trash pile. 
> 
> Also! Before anyone comes at me for 1)not faithfully sticking word for word to canon, or 2)giving Dany happy memories of him, just realize that I don't really care that much. At best, I cherry pick from canon what I like and just throw out the rest so just know that for anything I write. And Dany deserves some happy childhood memories!!! Fight me :))))
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy and drop me a comment if you have something (either nice or constructive please! Also, please do not start a fight in my comments again! ty) to say. I try to respond to every comment, so it's fun!
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr! Same username for both tumblr and ao3 :p
> 
> \--Rae

The sun is unbearably hot, with no cloud cover out to provide relief in the open plain. The light pushes down into the ground, into the dull, stamped down dirt of the path, until the ground is dry and hot and cracked.

At the end of the thin, sloping path, there is a small area cleared. It makes a circle, just big enough, with the tall grass sheared away until the ground is a dusty scalp of loose dirt. In the middle of this circle, there lies a wide pile of broken, charred wood. Nothing useful, nothing that could have been used for the support or the building of anything. Just broken, scraggly scraps, stacked into a low heap.

On this morning, the wood is ashy and charred, still smoldering slightly in the heat of the early sun. A young woman, petite, fair-haired and with a belly swollen with child, stands close to the wood pile. An older man, clothed in armor but with no weapon, stands farther away, at the edge of the path. Their voices are soft.

“Khaleesi,” the man says, “The sunrise has passed. Perhaps it is time to return to the city?”

The woman smiles softly, like it was painful. It was too old an expression for such a young face. “You needn’t worry for me, Ser Jorah. The danger has passed, hasn’t it?” She gestures at the layer of ash on the wood.

The knight carefully does not look. “You haven’t slept, Khaleesi. Surely, you are tired. I can escort you back to your handmaidens, if you’d like.”

It’s as if she didn’t hear him. “A king of seven kingdoms, he said, and yet his funeral pyre is where they burn the filth. The gods love their jokes.”

“Khaleesi…”

“I do not want to sleep.”

They are both silent, breaths soft and quiet in time with the shifting of the grass. The woman is unsettlingly still.

“I do not want to sleep,” she repeats, “If I sleep, I will dream of him. And I can’t bear to cry over the man he never was.”

“Forgive me, Khaleesi. I do not understand.”

“I think I mourned the loss of my brother long ago. I had to.” The woman wavers, like a flame in the wind. “You see, he wasn’t always so cruel. I think people forget that monsters were children once, too, before they became monsters. He wasn’t a monster when we were young.”

“We lived in Braavos for a time, when I was very small. Those are my best memories of him. He didn’t get angry there, at least not often. And he didn’t hit me, not there.”

She chokes on a pained gasp. “Gods, how pathetic does that sound? I mean to say that he was kind there, as kind as he ever was, before the world hardened him. We would spend hours under this big lemon tree, challenging each other to see who could eat the sourest lemon. I always won. He never much liked sour things.

“He taught me how to write my name in the dirt there, too. I had lessons for a small time, but he wanted to be the one to teach me our names. So we’d sit under the tree, and he would carve our names into the dirt with a stick. First father and mother’s names, then Rhaegar’s under theirs, and Rhaenys and Aegon beside it. Then his name, then mine. He’d hold my finger so I could trace them all, until I could do it on my own. It was important to him, that I knew all of our names before anything else. 

“Sometimes, I’d have these horrible night terrors. But he always told me that I never had to be afraid, because we had a great dragon knight watching over our dreams. A dragon knight, fearsome and strong, on the back of a white stallion, who would always be there to protect us from all the frightful things in the night. I always imagined the knight was Rhaegar. I think he did, too. 

“But he was never truly kind. Not even there. He’d get frustrated all the time, and he’d work himself into such a rage, screaming at Ser Willem and the others. I’d be scared of him then, when he’d get so angry. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason he didn’t hit me then is because he knew Ser Willem would have stopped him.”

The woman looks unsteady now, like she might fall if the wind gusts too hard. There is a single tear that falls, and then it seems that the dam breaks. She falls to her knees, like a marionette who’s strings have been cut, and sobs. Curled over her swollen belly, she chokes and gasps for air, dry heaving with effort.

“My  _ son,” _ she moans, “He was going to kill my  _ son.  _ He was going to murder his own nephew, his own family!”

The knight startles, reaching to pull her up, but she flinches and yells.

“Don’t  _ touch _ me! I don’t want  _ anyone  _ to touch me!” She cries, “My brother is dead! He’s dead and I’ll never see him again, and he was going to  _ kill my child!  _ Why couldn’t he just love me? Love me enough to not hurt me! He’s been my entire world since we were children, and then he  _ sold  _ me!”

Her weeping takes on a frenzied keening sound, but she keeps one hand pressed to the curve of her stomach, and one to her heart. Slowly, she slumps, until she is laying on her side, pressed into the heat of the dirt. The knight hovers uselessly, unsure what to do, or how to handle the distraught heap of the woman in front of him.

Time passes, and neither knight nor woman can be sure how long exactly. Eventually, the woman’s tears slow, and her breath comes back to her. The knight kneels next to her, slowly, uncertain, but is relieved when she takes his offered hand to pull her into a sitting position. He takes the waterskin from his belt and presses her to drink.

The woman holds the water loosely, and sniffles like a child. “I still love him. Is that wrong? He was a monster, but he was my brother, too. For so long, he was the only constant in my life. But I hate him, too.”

She looks soft, too soft, like smoke disappearing into the air, and then a familiar steel returns to her and her entire body tenses like she’s readying for a fight.

“No,” she shakes her head, sternly. “No. I can love him, and hate him. I can miss him for the child he was but not the man he grew to be. I cannot cut him out of my heart when he’s been a part of it for so long. But I lost him long before he died, I know that now. So I will choose to remember all the good times fondly, but to never forgive him for all the bad. I think...I think it’s the only way I can survive.”

The woman looks up at her knight, lets him raise her up from the dirt and steady her on her feet. 

“I think you’re right, Ser Jorah. I need to sleep. Will you take me back?” She tucks her hand into the crook of his arm, leaning on him for balance. He murmurs an affirmative, and starts them up the path. 

As they walk farther and farther from her brother’s funeral pyre, the woman feels her strength and resolve return to her. She lifts her chin, sets her eyes in front of her, and thinks,  _ if I look back, I am lost. _

  
  



End file.
